Fast, actionable advice from Founders, CEOs, and Investors

Ho Nam (Managing Director at Altos Ventures) The First Breaking Point – Altos VenturesInitial – the process is new, ad hoc, chaotic and undocumented. Individual heroics are relied upon to get the job done. Repeatable – the process is somewhat documented. Repeating the same steps may be attempted. It’s not clear if the process will yield desired outputs. Defined – the process is well defined, documented and confirmed as a standard process that can produce results. Managed – the process is quantitatively managed in accordance with a… (read more)

Sam Altman (President at Y Combinator) Startup Advice – Sam AltmanHere is some of the best startup advice I’ve heard or given (mostly heard): (a) Make something people want and (b) A great team and a great market are both critically important—you have to have both. The debate about which is more important is silly.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) MBA Mondays: When Its Not Your Team – AVCCompany building is not this simple, but I do like to think about it terms of two stages. Getting the product right and customers/users scaling. Then scaling the company and the team. If you aren’t doing the first, you mostly don’t need to worry about the second. There are occasional team issues in the first stage you need to deal with but they aren’t the big thing you need to focus on. The big thing you need ot to focus on is the product and its… (read more)

Ben Horowitz (Co-Founder & Partner @ Andreessen Horowitz) Taking the Mystery out of Scaling a Company – Ben’s BlogWhen an organization grows in size, things that were previously easy become difficult. Still, if the company doesn’t expand, then it will never be much of a company, so the challenge is to grow and degrade as slowly as possible.

Ben Horowitz (Co-Founder & Partner @ Andreessen Horowitz) No Credit for Predicting Rain – Ben’s BlogAt a certain point in the process, no credit will be given for predicting rain. The only credit will be for helping to build an ark.

Ben Horowitz (Co-Founder & Partner @ Andreessen Horowitz) CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is – Ben’s BlogThere are three key reasons why being transparent about your company’s problems makes sense: 1. Trust – Without trust, communication breaks. 2. The more brains working on the hard problems, the better. 3. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) Tech Ops As A Metaphor For Building, Running, & Leading A Company – AVCThings that work well at small scale break at large scale – you need different people, processes, and systems as a company grows. You need to instrument your system so you can see when things are reaching the breaking point, well before they break. Overbuilt systems are hard to implement, manage, and scale

Mariya Yao (Founder at Xanadu) Lessons Learned: Rapid Iteration for Mobile App DesignWhat often happens is a startup builds a product people like but don’t love. They’ll typically appear to do well early on, but won’t have enough of a passionate following to achieve meaningful growth or revenues.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) The Management Team – While Building Usage – AVCMany of the hires that are made in the “building usage” stage are going to report directly to the founder/CEO. The additional product hires may report to you because it is likely that you are running product as well. The community team may report to you. And who is leading that team? The business development person, the marketing person, the admin/finance/HR/legal person, and probably all the sales people are likely reporting to you. Have you eve… (read more)

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) MBA Mondays: When Its Not Your Team – AVCThese issues can play themselves out again when the company is larger. Companies can lose their way. Or their product lineup can get stale. Or competition can enter the market and change the dynamics for users or buyers. Once again, you need to focus in on getting the product right and making sure that it is providing value to customers/users.

Ho Nam (Managing Director at Altos Ventures) The First Breaking Point – Altos VenturesInitial – the process is new, ad hoc, chaotic and undocumented. Individual heroics are relied upon to get the job done. Repeatable – the process is somewhat documented. Repeating the same steps may be attempted. It’s not clear if the process will yield desired outputs. Defined – the process is well defined, documented and confirmed as a standard process that can produce results. Managed – the process is quantitatively managed in accordance with a… (read more)